The Widower's Two-Step by Rick Riordan

Author:Rick Riordan [Riordan, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: 2147
ISBN: 9780553576450
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1998-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

I looked over the guy's shoulder, through the glass wall into the room where Cam was giving a guitar lesson to an adolescent kid whose acne was the same shade of red as his Stratocaster.

Cam was hunched over, examining the kid's fingers as the kid moved them on the fret board. Cam's forehead had a pancakesized yellow and purple hickey on it from our last meeting at the Cactus Cafe. He had a heavy drinker's swollen morningafter face and rumpled clothes that suggested he'd crawled out of bed and down the steps just in time for this lesson. Probably a normal week in the life of a superstar guitarist.

I looked back at the salesman. He was a large man. Flabby large, with arms that had mass but no muscle lines. His face hadn't seen a razor blade or a toothbrush or even a nose hair clipper in a mighty long time. He had a HarleyDavidson Tshirt with cigarette burn holes on the belly.

"Cam's looked better," I said.

Harley grinned. "Some guy's been leaning on him. Some big ass motherfucker—private detective or something. He slammed Cam's head into a wall.

Then last night he came back and did Cam's ribs."

"You saw this?"

Harley leaned closer to me. "Naw, but you know what I told Cam—I said take me along next time. I'll put that dick motherfucker in a vise grip."

I smiled appreciatively.

The slow, distorted power chords of Bad Religion seeped through the glass window of the practice room. Cam nodded his head and the adolescent smiled. Talent under development.

"He'll want to talk to me," I told Harley. "Tell him it's the dick motherfucker."

Harley started to laugh, then he saw I was serious. He scratched his beard. He pointed at me with his thumb and tried to frame a question.

"I don't know about the ribs," I amended. "I just did the forehead. And it was a beer keg.

You get prettier bruises with a beer keg."

Harley searched his beard with his fingers a little more. Then slowly he cracked a grin.

He turned and started what he'd been doing before I came in—hanging guitar straps on a rotating display.

"Cam ain't much of a boss," Harley told me. "Be my guest."

I walked into the practice room. Cam was nodding his head and saying encouraging things about the adolescent's Fchord. Then they both saw me.

I winked at the kid and told him to keep up the good work with the Fchord. Then I looked at Cam, whose purplish forehead was turning almost flesh colour. "How you feeling?"

"Got a student," he managed to say.

"He can practice." I turned to the kid. "I bet you know 'Glycerine' already, don't you, Slick?"

The kid got that elated light in his eyes that beginning guitarists get when they actually know a request. He looked down and dutifully began plinking out the Bush song.

"Let's talk," I told Cam.

"Why you think I'd want to—"

"I went to see Alex Blanceagle last night. He looks a lot worse than you do. Jean paid him a visit."

Cam's beady, bloodshot eyes move an inch farther apart.

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